1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to loaders for paintball guns. More particularly, the invention relates to a paintball loader having a motor-driven impeller for actively feeding paintballs to the infeed opening of a paintball gun.
2. Description of the Related Art
The game of paintball has enjoyed great success in recent years. In the game, each of two or more teams tries to capture the opposing team's flag. The players on the teams carry a compressed air-powered gun that shoots paintballs (i.e., gelatin-covered spherical capsules which contain a colored liquid) a considerable distance. When a player is hit with a paintball fired from a gun, the paintball ruptures and leaves a colored mark on the hit player; the hit player must leave the game. As the game of paintball has grown in sophistication, semi-automatic paintball guns (i.e., guns that sequentially fire individual paintballs as fast as the trigger can be repeatedly pulled) have become more prevalent. The high firing rate capability of semi-automatic paintball guns has necessitated the use of bulk paintball loaders in conjunction with such guns.
A conventional bulk paintball loader typically comprises a housing positioned above and slightly to one side of the paintball gun. The housing is adapted to internally store a relatively large number of paintballs and has a bottom outlet opening through which the stored paintballs can sequentially drop. Connected to the housing's bottom outlet opening, and extending downwardly therefrom, is an outfeed tube that is connectable to the paintball gun's hollow infeed tube.
During normal operation of the loader, paintballs dropped through the bottom outlet opening of the housing form a paintball stack within the outfeed tube and gun infeed tube. When the paintball at the bottom of the stack is dropped into the firing chamber of the paintball gun, it is replaced, at the top of the stack, from the supply of paintballs remaining in the loader housing, thereby replenishing the stack. In replenishing the stack of paintballs, however, jams sometimes occur within the loader housing, above its bottom outlet opening. Paintball jams of this nature prevent normal gravity-fed delivery of paintballs downwardly through the bottom outlet opening, with the result that the paintball stack can be totally depleted after several shots of the paintball gun.
One solution for clearing paintball jams involves forcibly shaking the paintball gun and attached loader to dislodge the paintballs that are causing the jam within the loader housing. This solution has proved undesirable as it interrupted the proper aiming of the paintball gun and correspondingly interrupted the paintball gun user's ability to shoot the paintballs continuously and rapidly.
Another solution is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 5,282,454, which is incorporated herein by reference. The '454 patent incorporates a jam clearing system into the paintball loader device. The jam clearing system includes an agitator disposed within the housing near the outlet, and an optical circuit for detecting the absence of paintballs at a specified location within the outfeed tube (i.e., a depleted stack). Upon detection of the absence of a paintball at the specified location within the outfeed tube, the optical circuit would close a switch to turn on a stepper motor, which would cause the agitator to rotate. Agitator rotation usually would eliminate the paintball jam within the loader, allowing paintballs to resume gravity feed into the outfeed tube. This, in turn, would replenish the paintball stack and cause the optical circuit to open the switch and turn off the motor, thus arresting the agitator. While improving delivery of paintballs to the paintball gun, the agitator solution of the '454 patent is not optimal because the agitator simply shuffles paintballs within the loader housing, which are fed only by gravity to the outfeed tube.
Yet another solution for clearing paintball jams is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 5,816,232, which is also incorporated herein by reference. In the “active feed” loader of the '232 patent, a switch controlling a motor-driven impeller is turned on and off by an optical paintball detector in a manner similar to the agitator control in the '454 patent. The impeller of the '232 patent is situated in a surrounding well at the bottom of the loader housing and has curved arms that sequentially move paintballs one-by-one toward the outfeed tube. Similar active-feed paintball loaders are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,213,110 and U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0014230 A1. In all of these active-feed loaders the impeller is made of a relatively stiff, unyielding material. If the impeller should turn when there is a paintball jam, or when the stack of paintballs in the outfeed tube is static (gun not firing), the stiff impeller can squeeze and undesirably break one or more paintballs in the loader housing. This latter situation can occur if the motor does not shut off due to a malfunction, or during normal operation if motor/impeller rotation is not arrested quickly enough. U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0092513 A1 recognizes this impeller over-running problem, but the solution proposed is a complex and seemingly costly spring mechanism built into the impeller.
A need therefore exists for a simple and economical active-feed paintball loader that reliably feeds paintballs to the outfeed tube to ensure a rapid and steady supply of paintballs to the gun, while preventing (or at least greatly reducing the likelihood of) paintball breakage in the loader.